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In Japan, a noren is a short curtain that hangs to the entrance of a little teahouse or restaurant. It is not solid, but made of strips, and so when you go through it, your hand goes first, then your arm, and the rest of you, but quickly the strips fall back into place, and it is as if a wisp, a ghost, a sprite has passed through.

I always visualized Ichiro Suzuki that way, slipping from Japanese baseball to our major leagues so effortlessly, barely stirring the air.

As he nears his 40th birthday, Suzuki has long since played more in the United States than in Japan –– nine seasons there, 13 here –– on his way to, surely, accumulating more hits than anyone who has ever stood in a batter's box. He's a handful short of 4,000 now, with better than 2,700 made in our American League. Beyond lie only Ty Cobb and Pete Rose, who holds the record with 4,256 — a total Suzuki could very well eclipse only two summers from now.

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The government's decision Tuesday to oppose the merger of US Airways and American Airlines stunned airline analysts, but many predicted the deal eventually will win go through.

"Given that other airline mergers were approved, this was a surprise," University of Richmond transportation economist George Hoffer said. Other major carriers already have been allowed to combine forces, so "it's illogical to oppose this merger. This move comes a day late and a dollar short," he said.

The Justice Department lawsuit generally is being seen as a negotiating tactic rather than an effort to kill the $11 billion deal.

"The DOJ challenge could be a power play designed to force the airlines to give up routes, gates, and slots" to allow for more competition within the industry, George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog.com, said in a written assessment.

The airlines suggest the suit will cause only a delay, not a derailment. In a letter to employees, American Chief Executive Tom Horton promised to vigorously defend the merger in a court process that "will likely take a few months."

The deal to create the country's largest airline was announced in February and appeared to be on track for a quick completion.

That's because in recent years, antitrust regulators have signed off on similar transactions. For example, the Obama administration approved the mega-mergers of United and Continental in 2010 and Southwest and AirTran Airways in 2011. The Bush administration approved Delta's merger with Northwest in 2008.

Given that US Airways already has made two round trips to bankruptcy court, and American has yet to emerge from bankruptcy, analysts assumed their combination would quickly win approval.

The Two-Way

Justice Sues To Block US Airways-American Airlines Merger

The government's decision Tuesday to oppose the merger of US Airways and American Airlines stunned airline analysts, but many predicted the deal eventually will win go through.

"Given that other airline mergers were approved, this was a surprise," University of Richmond transportation economist George Hoffer said. Other major carriers already have been allowed to combine forces, so "it's illogical to oppose this merger. This move comes a day late and a dollar short," he said.

The Justice Department lawsuit generally is being seen as a negotiating tactic rather than an effort to kill the $11 billion deal.

"The DOJ challenge could be a power play designed to force the airlines to give up routes, gates, and slots" to allow for more competition within the industry, George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog.com, said in a written assessment.

The airlines suggest the suit will cause only a delay, not a derailment. In a letter to employees, American Chief Executive Tom Horton promised to vigorously defend the merger in a court process that "will likely take a few months."

The deal to create the country's largest airline was announced in February and appeared to be on track for a quick completion.

That's because in recent years, antitrust regulators have signed off on similar transactions. For example, the Obama administration approved the mega-mergers of United and Continental in 2010 and Southwest and AirTran Airways in 2011. The Bush administration approved Delta's merger with Northwest in 2008.

Given that US Airways already has made two round trips to bankruptcy court, and American has yet to emerge from bankruptcy, analysts assumed their combination would quickly win approval.

The Two-Way

Justice Sues To Block US Airways-American Airlines Merger

The city of London has ordered a company to cease tracking the cellphones of pedestrians who pass its recycling bins, which also double as kiosks showing video advertisements. The bins logged data about any Wi-Fi-enabled device that passed within range.

The company, called Renew, recently added the tracking technology to about a dozen of the 100 bins it had installed before London hosted the 2012 Summer Olympics.

"The idea," as the website Quartz wrote last week, "is to bring internet tracking cookies to the real world." The title of the Quartz post that first reported the tracking program was, "This recycling bin is following you."

That story generated concern in Britain, with privacy advocates saying the program went too far in tracking people's movements without their consent. Such systems could report new or repeat visits to an area and, if combined with data from trackers in stores and elsewhere, could form a detailed picture of a consumer's habits.

The system reportedly used technology from Presence Orb, whose website features the tagline "a cookie for the real world."

As Quartz reports, the practice of monitoring smartphones and similar devices isn't as regulated as online tracking. And unlike a computer logging an Internet cookie, most mobile devices do not record contact with tracking systems that detect and record the devices' attempts to connect to a Wi-Fi network.

From the BBC:

"The bins, which are located in the Cheapside area of central London, log the media access control (MAC) address of individual smartphones — a unique identification code carried by all devices that can connect to a network."

That reportedly ended Monday, when a spokesman for the city of London's local authority says, "We have already asked the firm concerned to stop this data collection immediately and we have also taken the issue to the Information Commissioner's Office. Irrespective of what's technically possible, anything that happens like this on the streets needs to be done carefully, with the backing of an informed public."

In a statement issued Monday, Renew says the program was merely a trial of "a glorified counter on the street," which it is no longer conducting.

"I'm afraid that in the interest of a good headline and story there has been an emphasis on style over substance that makes our technology trial slightly more interesting than it is," company CEO Kaveh Memari said. He added that many of the capabilities reported in the media had not yet been developed, saying that the program had resulted in "extremely limited, encrypted, anonymous/aggregated data."

British privacy group Big Brother Watch welcomed London's move to end the program, but it added that such monitoring shouldn't have been done in the first place.

"Systems like this highlight how technology has made tracking us much easier," Big Brother Watch director Nick Pickles tells the BBC, "and in the rush to generate data and revenue there is not enough of a deterrent for people to stop and ensure that people are asked to give their consent before any data is collected."

The broader vulnerability of cellphones was highlighted in an NPR report earlier this summer, when Laura Sydell explained "How hackers tapped into my cellphone for less than $300."